Bibliographic details and abstracts are available to all. Downloads of full-text dissertations are restricted to University of Portsmouth members who must login. MPhils may be accessed by all.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the use of intelligence in conflict and what implications it may have, using the US withdrawal from Afghanistan as an example. The aim is to evaluate the importance of utilising both strategic and operational intelligence in war by understanding the intelligence failures that contributed to facilitating the Taliban to take control of Afghanistan after the United States withdrawal. Academic secondary data was used to reach a global and international field to; identify the factors that kept the US and their allies in Afghanistan after Bin Laden was executed, examining the intelligence that was made available at the time of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and evaluate the implications of the use of intelligence that was made available at the time of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Findings of this dissertation have discovered that there were potential intelligence failings by the US, such as not appreciating the cultural impacts of rural Afghans or not appreciating the full military and social power the Taliban had gained throughout Afghanistan. Such intelligence failings impacted and resulted in the rapid takeover of Taliban control over Afghanistan. The complex and diverse scope of factors that were portrayed throughout the US occupying Afghanistan since October 2001 ultimately affected the withdrawal in August 2021. Therefore, this dissertation highlights the importance of considering intelligence from a diverse range of perspectives, aside from the impact that intelligence may have on the US, but also Afghanistan, Pakistan and China.

Course: Criminal Justice - MSc - C2681F

Date Deposited: 2023-05-11

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14137.html